


"You were the one good thing in all of it."

by shannonsaid



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 03:07:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6638794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shannonsaid/pseuds/shannonsaid





	"You were the one good thing in all of it."

Natasha’s curtains fluttered in the night breeze, startling her awake. Before the fog of sleep had disappeared, instinct took over, and her hand wrapped around the gun beneath her pillow.

Silently, she slipped out of her bedroom. The light above the kitchen table was on, which lent a slight glow to the room, leaving the rest of the apartment in a shadowy darkness.

Natasha’s skin prickled. Not out of fear, she realized, but familiarity. She released her grip on her gun, but only slightly, as she inched her way toward the kitchen table. A notebook sat alone on the table. It was crumpled, missing its front cover, and was held together with a rubber band. Sliding into a seat at the table, she set her gun down beside the notebook, and pulled off the rubber band.

Her hands shook as she flipped through the notebook, and she let them. The pages were full of a cramped handwriting she’d recognize anywhere. There were newspaper clippings stapled and taped to multiple pages. Latitudes and longitudes were written in the margins beside dates and times. An entire page was dedicated to the writing of the word red - in English and Russian and the other 15 languages she knew he knew, though she only recognized 10 of them. The last handful of pages were riddled with bullet holes. Whether by accident or intentional, Natasha couldn’t tell. The notebook read like a book that was being discovered as it was being written. Starting with a beginning, and slowly filling while things were remembered.

Natasha couldn’t stop the gasp that fell from her lips when she reached the back cover. Instead of words and newspaper clippings, the page was dedicated to a drawing of her. Not her as she was now, but when she was younger. She looked like porcelain, pale and perfect, but she knew she was more like marble, with scars that cut all the way to the bone.

“I didn’t realize this notebook was you. Not at first. Not until I drew that.”

He stepped out of the shadows and pointed down at the drawing that still held her gaze.

“I loved you.”

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. Made by a voice that haunted both her dreams and her nightmares. He didn’t ask her if she had loved him too, and he wouldn’t, because he never did.

She pulled her eyes away from the drawing and met his from across the table. He was still blurred by the darkness of the apartment, but she could see the outline of him. The curve of his jaw, the bow of his lips, the broadness of his shoulders, the gleam of metal from his hand, the stubble that traced its way down his throat. All things, that at one time, she knew more intimately than she knew herself.

“We loved each other.”

He nodded, as if she were confirming a truth he already knew.

“I remember living in a world of only darkness as the Winter Soldier, except when I was with you. With you the world was vibrant, promising, hopeful.”

His voice was a mixture of anger and sadness, disappointment and faith.

“And then you left and took with you my humanity and everything that gave my life meaning.”

Her head was already shaking before her words spilled from her mouth.

“I didn’t leave. I never wou.. They took you from me. They took us from each other.”

She glanced down at the notebook still open on the kitchen table, her fingers running over the bullet holes. She noticed now that they started on the page with Odessa’s latitude and longitude. It was the place she had seen him again. The place he had seen her again.

“Is that why -” her voice faltered, as realization took over. “They told me you were dead and that it was my fault. That my love killed you. They thought they broke me.”

“But the Widow doesn’t break so easily.”

She laughed. The hollow sound echoing around her kitchen. “Oh, I broke, just not in the way they wanted me to. I didn’t acquiesce. I rebelled. I got revenge. But I was still broken. Blood is not glue.”

She ran her hands back across the bullet holes, her eyes following the path of her fingers.

“In Odessa, I knew it was you.”

Her gaze rose, again leveling with his. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

“Because it was you.” He answered simply.

“But you thought I left you.”

“You could’ve killed me tonight, but you didn’t. Why?”

His blue eyes burned into her green ones from across the table, the answer to his accusation dancing between.

She swallowed. “Because it was you.”

Natasha had known it was him the minute she had woken up. She may have been the best, but he had always been better.

“I tried to find you. After Odessa. But you disappeared. It was as if you had never even been there.”

“I remembered, so they made me forget.” He shrugged, the action seeming to be heavier than it should have been. “Or at least they tried.”

He reached across the table, the light making his eyes sparkle, as he flipped through the pages of his notebook. “That day on the bridge,” he tapped his finger against the coordinates of Washington DC, “Steve wasn’t the only one I remembered.”

“You shot me.”

“In the shoulder.”

“I would’ve killed you.”

“To save Steve.” He nodded. “You were always willing to do whatever was necessary to save someone you love. Even if that meant kil…”

He fell silent, as he pulled himself upright and back away from the table.

“Even if that meant killing someone else I love.”

The weight of Natasha’s words pressed down on them, leaving both of them breathless.

Natasha flipped to the back cover, “that girl never stopped loving you. Even when she didn’t know there was still someone left to love.”

He stared down at his drawing. The smeared pencil marks left the drawing blurred around the edges. “The man she loved doesn’t exist anymore.”

Natasha stood up from her chair and slowly made her way around the table. “Good. If he did, she’d be in love with a ghost.”

“At least a ghost would be more sure of his feelings.”

“Maybe,” she replied, coming to a stop at his side. “But what makes him a ghost is his inability to let go of his past.”

“But his past makes up who he is.”

“No,” she shook her head. “His past makes up who he was. He decides who he is.”

His hand flexed at his side, and Natasha reached for it, sliding hers into his. She felt him tense beside her, before his muscles relaxed.

Reaching forward, Natasha flipped the notebook closed and lifted it from the table. “You get to decide,” she said, offering him his notebook.

He tightened his grip on her hand, as she handed him the notebook. Sliding into the backpack that was slung across a chair, he turned to look at her. “I could use some sleep.”

Natasha’s heart pounded against her ribs, as words in his notebook flashed across her memory. They were words about how he rarely remembered a time where sleeping came as easy as it did as when they slept together.

Pulling him toward her bedroom, she left her gun on the kitchen table. She knew nothing was more dangerous than her feelings for the man crawling into bed beside her, and she didn’t feel the least bit afraid.


End file.
